Girlfriend’s Day

I’m writing a review. I don’t usually do this because I don’t read reviews because they are stupid. I don’t like movies people like and I like movies people don’t like. I think Rotten Tomatoes is the worst judge of anything…ever.

Now that that’s out of the way…I’m not really going to write a review I just want to talk about a film on Netflix right now called Girlfriend’s Day. I don’t want to give anything away because I like going into films not knowing even the genre if possible, and part of what makes this film so delightful to me is that it follows no one genre. Buckle up, it’s vague rambling time:

First, it stars Bob Obernik and he co-wrote it. That’s what hooked me. I watched Breaking Bad here and there but it wasn’t really my thing (this is where I lose most of you) but every scene with Bob Obernik sucked me in because he is so charming and compelling and plays this awful and sometimes pathetic character that provides some comic relief in a super dark series. I connect with comic relief. Bob (I’m assuming if we met he’d let me call him that) is great. There’s not much else I can say about it but great. He can pull off a character that has dry wit without even being British. I watched all of Better Call Saul even though I never finished Breaking Bad and a few months later whilst wistfully thinking about it, I took to the internet to see what Bob’s next thing would be.

So let the record show I intended to watch it the day it came out. Let the record ignore that my tweets get an average of two hearts.

If you’re, “not into” movies that “don’t make sense” because they’re not grounded in a world you know, you probably won’t like this movie. You probably don’t like musicals either and are probably a bad person.

As a writer, creating worlds is fun. Sometimes you want to explore a serious issue in a way that is removed from reality so it’s not so heavy. I think I relate to this because that’s the kind of world I live in. I think life is hard and serious and sometimes really depressing, but that doesn’t keep me from cracking jokes all the time.

And sometimes you don’t want to so far removed that there are superheroes and aliens–actually speaking of aliens, 10 Cloverfield Lane and Arrival do a great job with this too. A big reason is because movies with a lot of Special Effects cost a lot of money to make and we don’t all have that kind of money but still want to have a little fun. I liked the idea of The Lobster for the same reason but it ended up being too violent for my taste.

Girlfriend’s Day is set in a world where a different kind of person is famous and the stakes on something as simple as a slogan contest are high. I love scripts that can make a crisis out of something that would mean nothing to us in our world. Pixar is great at this, making us feel for toys who don’t get played with and worry about bugs when it rains.

I know a lot of people like to live/write in this surreal world and a lot of these movies end up with 30% on Rotten Tomatoes and/or never distributed so I want to voice my encouragement to keep on keeping on. I think we forget sometimes that it’s okay to be a little weird. I’m not sure what it says about me that I find weirdness relatable but I loved Girlfriend’s Day and if you’re weird, you just might enjoy it.

Girlfriend’s Day is rated for (as far as I noticed) some F-words. There is also some blood and implications of sex. But you should still watch it, Mom, there are less F-words than Fundamentals of Caring.

Netflix is on a roll right now. They’ve got some Original films that are blowing up and they’ve taken chances on writers/directors who don’t have lots of experience under their belt.

Recently in an interview, Ava Duvernay talked about how she had support from Netflix to do any documentary she wanted and she ended up making 13th which is fascinating and relevant and it was the story she wanted to tell and had wanted to tell for a while. Girlfriend’s Day was also a script that had been around for a while. Like 18 years.

At Sundance we saw a few films that were or have since been picked up by Netflix and one thing they all have in common for me is they feel like the stories the creators wanted to tell. None of them felt formulaic. They didn’t feel over-produced. They aren’t strapped into a genre. Some of them even make fun of certain genres in a fun way. They aren’t all comedy or all drama. None of them shove one theme down your throat but they all have themes. They explore new worlds and/or just tell stories that are unique and interesting. There is some good stuff coming next month and in the coming months you will love (like Mudbound). Also, Fuller House wasn’t even bad. You go, Netflix. And you, reading this, go Netflix.